A letter from the Home Secretary to Geoffrey Howe from 2 November 1989 reported: 'We understand from the Metropolitan Police that so far this year 223 such parties have taken place in London and the South East, of which 96 were actually stopped after they had begun. A further 95 planned parties have been prevented by pre-emptive action by the police or local authorities' (letter 2 November 1989).

In a hand written comment, Prime Minister Thatcher wrote ‘if this is a new “fashion” we must be prepared for it and preferably prevent such things from lasting’ (6 September 1989).

After reviewing the powers available to the authorities, the Government concluded that the way forward was to increase the fines for existing licensing offences, rather than bring in new powers as such. The result was to be the Entertainments (Increased Penalties) Act 1990 - 'An Act to increase the penalties for certain offences under enactments relating to the licensing of premises or places used for dancing, music or other entertainments of a like kind'. The question was of course to be revisited a few years later when the Government introduced the Criminal Justice Act which gave the police more direct powers to intervene to stop parties.

'Acid House Parties - the Prime Minister has seen the Home Secretary's letter of 2 November to the Lord President. She was content with his proposals to increase the penalites for illegally organising acid house parties and for making the profits from such parties libale to confiscation' (4 November 1989)

In the mean time, the police and local authorities were encouraged to make more assertive use of existing powers. The papers include a press clipping praising Operation Jute, a massive police operation to stop a party in Kent: 'Drug busting police sealed off an entire town twice at the weekend to claim thier first victory over the Acid House cult. Six thousand revellers were turned back from Chatham, Kent in the early hours of yesterday after a specially trained squad of 250 officers outmanoeuvred them across three counties' (Daily Express, 9 October 1989).

Thursday, December 29, 2016

I recently came across an issue of Tate magazine from 2000, a special issue celebrating the opening in that year of Tate Modern. It includes an interesting discussion between Philip Dodd and Zadie Smith, looking back over 1990s London, including the transformation of Shoreditch into Hoxton, the deaths of Stephen Lawrence and Princess Diana, and the fascist bomb attacks on Brixton, Brick Lane and Old Compton Street. One of the things Zadie Smith touches on is the Blue Note Club in Hoxton:

'It was the last of the community clubbing experiences. It was artificial because it was partly to do with fame. You'd have a lot of people in there pretending that they couldn't see Bjork, who was standing right next to them. Yet the whole of the club was in one corner of the room circled around Bjork. It was about fame, but it was these people who did have quite a huge amount of fame who seemed perfectly willing to hang out with you, smoke with you, have a drink. Everybody was having a laugh.

Firstly, I was a Sunday kid, for the jungle, but you went to Anokha, on Monday, to see all that explosion of Asianness. When it first happened it was so exciting. We could see Talvin [Singh] doing so well. Bhangra has been going on in Wembley and Bradford for years. but he just changed it slightly, added a bit more of a western sound to it and everybody loved it. On jungle nights, MCs used to say a lot of cheesy things over the top of it like "black and white unite", but it did feel like that'

(I never went to Anokha at Blue Note, but I did go to the night they put on around that time at The Vibe Bar, called Calcutta Cyber Cafe)

Monday, March 14, 2016

It is now more than 30 years since the 1984-85 miners strike, the last great stand of what had once been seen as the most militant and powerful section of the working class in Britain.
The dispute started in South Yorkshire in March 1984 with miners walking out in response to the announcement that Cortonwood pit was threatened with closure. The miners claimed that there was a Government and coal board plan to close down large parts of the industry, and the National Union of Mineworkers called a national strike.

The strike finished a year later in defeat. The miners’ claims that the industry was under threat were soon proved correct – the last deep mine in the UK closed last December.
The full forces of the state were mobilised against the strike. New laws were passed, more than 11,000 arrests were made and almost 200 miners were imprisoned.

On the other side there was significant support for the strike, with miners support groups being set up across the country. On the music front there were many benefit gigs involving a wide spectrum from folk singers to punk bands, and as the strike progressed songs were written about it and records released.
What follows is a mix I have put together of music related to the miners strike. It includes songs and tracks about the strike, mostly from the time of the dispute but in some cases looking back in its aftermath. The mix also includes some spoken word recollections from the strike, including my own of one particular day in Mansfield. It reflects the diversity of the musical output related to the strike, so does leap from industrial noise to acoustic ballads – and in some cases mixes the two together. The collision of Norma Waterson and Test Dept sounds great!

The mix is based on a set I played in March 2014 at an Agit Disco benefit night for Housmans bookshop, held at Surya, Pentonville Road, London N1. It included a selection of DJs most of whom had contributed to Stefan Szczelkun’s Agit Disco project/book on political music. The full line up included:
Sian Addicott,
Martin Dixon,
John Eden,
Marc Garrett,
Nik Górecki,
Caroline Heron,
Stewart Home,
Paul Jamrozy (Test Dept),
Micheline Mason,
Tracey Moberly,
Luca Paci,
Simon Poulter,
Howard Slater,
Andy T,
Neil Transpontine.
Tom Vague
and Stefan Szczelkun.
I chose to focus on music relating to the miners strike as the event took place in the week of the 30th anniversary of the start of the strike. This is not a recording of the live set, but a mix put together later reflecting what I played that night.
If some of the sound quality is not great, hopefully it will stimulate you to search further...

Here's the full playlist with some details of the tracks:

00:00 Keresley Pit Women’s Support Group - You won’t find me on the picket line

From 7” EP ‘Amnesty – reinstate and set them free’ put out by Banner Theatre company in 1985

From BBC Radio Ballads: The Ballad of The Miner's Strike (2010), including miners recalling the Orgreave picket.

03:58 - Test Dept – Fuel to Fight

From the album Shoulder to Shoulder by Test Dept and South Wales Striking Miners Choir (1985)

04:32 – Norma Waterson – Coal not Dole

Song written by Kay Sutcliffe and originally recorded by Eve Bland for the album 'Which Side Are You On: Music For The Miners From The North East' (1985). The song has also been recorded by artists including The Happy End (1987), Chumbawamba (1992), The Oyster Band and Norma Waterson.
The song’s popularity perhaps relates to its melancholy anticipation of the actual outcome of the strike – not a heroic victory but the desolation of closed mines and industrial ruins. Sutcliffe asked ‘What will become of this pit-yard, Where men once trampled faces hard?’, imagining a future of ‘tourists gazing round. Asking if men once worked here,
Way beneath this pit-head gear’. Now all the pits have closed all that remains is the National Coal Mining Museum.

07:46 - Dave Burns – Maerdy, Last Pit in the Rhondda

A song written by Dave Rogers of Birmingham-based Banner Theatre, it was recorded by Dave Burns for his album ‘Last pit in the Rhondda’ (1986), released with the backing of South Wales NUM with proceeds ‘to help miners sacked as a result of the 84/85 strike’. Like ‘Coal Not Dole’, the song’s image of the strike-imposed silence of the mine foreshadows its future: ‘There's mist down in the valley and the snow lies on the hill, No men walk through the empty street the pit lies quiet and still’

a benefit for sacked miners at
Woodburn Miners Welfare Club in Dalkeith, Midlothian in 1985, this song recalls
the strikers who died amidst the massive police operation:

‘Let's pause here to remember the
men who gave their lives, Joe Green and David Jones were killed in fighting for
their rights / But their courage and their sacrifice we never will forget / And
we won't forget the reason, too, they met an early death / For the
strikebreakers in uniforms were many thousand strong / And any picket who was
in the way was battered to the ground / With police vans driving into them and
truncheons on the head’

17:26 – The Enemy Within – Strike

The Enemy Within was John Deguid and Marek Kohn, produced by Adrian Sherwood and Keith LeBlanc with sampled speech from Arthur Scargill. Released on Rough Trade 1984 – insert sleeve included statement – ‘Play this record at six and support the miners' campaign to create a surge of demand for power at six o'clock every evening!’
19:18 Council Collective – Soul DeepPaul Weller and Mick Talbot’s Style Council with guests including Motown singer Jimmy Ruffin, Dee C. Lee, Junior Giscombe, Dizzy Hites and Vaughan Toulouse: 'Getchamining
soul deep with a lesson in history, There's people fighting for their
communities, Don't say their struggle does not involve you, If you're from the
working class it's your struggle too'.19:30 – Ann Scargill
Spoken word reflection on women joining the picket line by one of the founders of Women Against Pit Closures.
22:34 and 24:55 - Alan SutcliffeExcerpts from speech by Kent miner, taken from the album Shoulder to Shoulder by Test Dept and South Wales Striking Miners Choir (1985). Last April (2015) I went to a great Test Dept film/book launch at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton. Alan Sutcliffe was there in the audience and said a few words.
25:28 – Nocturnal Emissions - Bring power to its knees
This track was included on the compilation album Here we go: A celebration of the first year of the U.K. Miner's Strike 1984-1985 (Sterile Records 1985). This version is from the 1985 album 'Songs of Love and Revolution'.27:33 – Pulp – Last day of the miners strike‘overhead the sound of horses' hooves, people fighting for their lives’. From the 2002 album ‘Hits’
31:54 - Chumbawamba – FitzwilliamFrom the compilation album ‘Dig This: A Tribute To The Great Strike’ (Forward Sounds International, 1985). 'Smiles for the cameras as the miners return, They say no one has lost and no one has gained, But wiser and stronger the people have changed, And it won't be the same in Fitzwilliam again'.

34:23 – Banner Theatre song group - AmnestyIncludes spoken word by miners from Keresley Pit, Coventry. From 7” EP ‘Amnesty – reinstate and set them free’ put out by Banner Theatre company in 1985
38:50 - The Country Pickets - Daddy (what did you do in the strike)From the album ‘Which side are you on ?’ (Which Side Records, 1985) – song written by Ewan MacColl, his version was included on a cassette he and Peggy Seeger put out in 1984. ‘Daddy what did you do in the strike’ on their Blackthorn records was 'a musical documentation of the 1984 miners strike' with 'profits to National Union of Mineworkers'.
42:35 - Style Council – A stone’s throw awayAn internationalist response linking the miners strike with other struggles across the world at that time: 'For liberty there is a cost, it's broken skull and leather cosh, from the boys in uniform, now you know what side they're on... In Chile, In Poland, Johannesburg, South Yorkshire, A stone's throw away, now we're there'.

Politics of Dancing

'People have always come together to move to music. In the process communities have been created, social divisions challenged, pleasure exalted over work and a billion relationships have blossomed. At the same time dancing bodies have often been subject to regulation – rules about when, where and how they can move, rules about who is allowed to dance with who, rules about what dancers can wear and put inside their bodies… That, in essence, is the 'politics of dancing'.

Musicking

'musicking... is an activity in which all those present are involved and for whose nature and quality, success or failure, everyone present bears some responsibility. It is not just a matter of composers, or even perform­ers, actively doing something to, or for, passive listeners. Whatever it is we are doing, we are all doing it together—performers, listeners... dancers, ticket collectors, piano movers, roadies, cleaners and all' (Christopher Small).

Dancing Questionnaire

The aim of the 'dancing questionnaire' is to get a sense of the diversity of people's experiences of dancing and musicking. If you want to contribute, please answer the following questions yourself and send to transpontine@btinternet.com.

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing? / 2.
What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing? / 3. You. Dancing. The best of times… / 4. You. Dancing. The worst of times… / 5.
Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented? / 6. When and where did you last dance? / 7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance? (Previous Questionnaires)

Photo policy

I spend a lot of time trying to find evocative images to go with some of the text on this site. I always fully credit and link to where photos were sourced from. If though I have used one of your images in a way you are not happy with, email me and I will remove it.